It is a Southern drawl that wishes it could sing outside so the world could hear how proud she is of her son, Demaryius Thomas, five days away from playing in a Super Bowl.

But this will have to do for now, because only her fellow inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Fla., can vouch for the love Katina Smith has in her heart for her child, how proud she is, how badly she yearns to repair their lives together.

Smith will be wearing a prison-issued gray T-shirt when she watches her son and his Broncos try to win the Super Bowl, because she is not permitted to wear his orange No. 88 jersey.

“But we did make pom-poms out of newspaper,” Smith said in a Monday night telephone interview with The Post.

She will be watching the Super Bowl with her mother, Minnie Thomas, her cellmate for the past 14 years, ever since they were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base. Thomas faced 40 years to life, Smith 20 years. Mother and daughter with shattered dreams watching a young man with the biggest football dream in a television room.

“I have a picture of Demaryius and the Broncos from the newspaper, I might have to take that to the TV room where we’re going to be watching the game and put that up in there,” Smith said. “We paint our faces … we get colored pencils, and we put like No. 88, D.T.”

There is light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Smith is scheduled to be released on Christmas Day 2016, Demaryius’ 29th birthday, but she is holding out hope it could be earlier.

In the meantime, there is the winter of her son’s content, and a mother cheering him every step of the way during the AFC Championship Game.

“I was nervous, I was shaking, I was sweating, and waving our pom-poms, and I was holding my breath and I was like ‘Oh my goodness, this is really happening, this is really happening,’ ” Smith said, her voice full of joy and excitement. “We were yelling and screaming and then we had to calm down because we didn’t want to disturb any of the other ladies in the unit.”

Smith, 41, will call Demaryius on Sunday morning.

“We pray over the telephone together and I ask him if he’s nervous, and I tell him if you make a mistake, don’t beat yourself up, he’s bad about that. … Make sure you keep your team encouraged, pray for them and play your best,’” Smith said.

For so many years, years of tears and guilt and regret, Smith wrestled with how and when she would tell
Demaryius and his two sisters about what happened to her and why.

“I didn’t really know what they knew, or what they had heard, what should I tell ’em or should I not tell ’em, I didn’t tell ’em for a long time because in my mind I was protecting them,” Smith said. “But at the same time, they didn’t know why I was locked up, and then they had other people saying, ‘Oh your mama’s locked up because your Mama’s selling drugs,’ then they had kids at school picking at them, and so I said I had to pray about that. I need to go ahead and tell him why I’m locked up, and then he can make his own decision from there whether he wants to forgive me or not.”

Demaryius was 11 when he pleaded with his grandmother to stop selling drugs in the home. He told his mother he dreamt somebody was going to go to jail for a long time.

Not long after, he was proven right.

“He was under the impression that I sold the drugs,” Smith said. “I did — and I told him and his sisters — I did keep money from my mother on two occasions and that’s how I got pulled into the whole thing.”

She was offered no more than eight years in prison if she agreed to testify against her mother.

She would not.

It took her nearly a decade to tell Thomas, who was raised by an aunt and uncle, the full story.

“I told him over the telephone,” Smith said. “I wasn’t able to tell him in person. But before I was able to tell him in person, his face was like he didn’t want to be there ‘Why do I have to come? I don’t even like coming down here.’

“The first time that he came to visit me was like in 2003. Then again in 2006. Then again in 2009.”

What made her finally decide to apologize to him?

“I felt like it was time, and that it was something that he needed to know. And it was heavy on my heart. I could talk to him over the phone, and it was like he respected me and he loved me, I knew that, but at the same time, it was something missing. Like the conversations might of been short, or the visits, he was kind of isolated. So I was like, maybe I need to go ahead and tell him and his sisters what really happened so they can make their own decision how they want to deal with it.”

Did he say, ‘I forgive you?’

“Yes sir.”

Those exact words?

“Yes sir.”

How did that make you feel when he said that?

“It really made me happy, and our relationship grew from that point on. It got stronger, and he would open up more about what was going on with him and what he was dealing with, and he included me more in situations that he had to deal with an everyday basis as far as his life, with his school, with his studies and stuff like that.

“I said it again back in 2012 if I’m not mistaken once again, because I wanted him to know that I loved him and I didn’t want him to think that I chose my mother over him and his sisters. But it seemed like that for him, I’m assuming, and to a lot of other people as well.

“I just wanted him to know that I was sorry, and I was sorry for all the bad choices that I made that led me to be away from him.”

It is not, of course, a life without more regrets than any mother should have.

“Mainly not being there for them, because I missed a lot being here. … I missed graduation from high school, from going to the basketball games, ’cause he used to be a basketball star as well … His track meets, being there when he went to Georgia Tech for the first day,” Smith said. “And then, also, when he got drafted in the NFL, and not being there to attend the games, ’cause I watched some of the footage on TV of after he makes a touchdown or after the game is over, and he looks up in the stands and I’m not there so, those are some of the main regrets that I have.

“And then also, not being able to be there now, when his team is going to the Super Bowl.”

Many more tears for Katina Smith than cheers over the years.

“Not being able to hold him, and hug him, and tell him how much I love him … and not just being there for Christmas and Thanksgiving, birthdays. … Every day I live with the regrets of not being there for him and his sisters.”

I asked Smith, now 41, how she is a different woman than she was in 1999.

“The experience that I’ve been through has humbled me more, and I’m more appreciative of the things that I have,” she said. “I have learned to make better decisions than what I made back then. I think the whole thing through before I even make a decision. I pray about a situation before I make a decision instead of just jumping into it, and considering all the consequences of those choices that I’m faced to make.

“I really think that I’m a better mother now than I’ve been in the past.”

Demaryius is proud his mother is proud.

“My momma, she just told me, ‘I told you you would make it.’ We haven’t really talked about it much, but I talked to my grandma and she said the same thing. She got emotional and all, but they just said, ‘You were going to make it.’

“You never know, one day you can be here and the next day you’ll be gone. So I take every day like it’s my last, I play every football game like it’s my last. I was brought up a Christian, I was raised around great people. They drive me more to know that they’re there and they’re watching me. I try to go out there and play my best because they’re going to talk about it to the people in the jailhouse.”

Smith will be a flood of emotions come kickoff.

“Well, one of the things is I wish I could be at the stadium, watching the game in person with my 88 jersey, with my pom-poms, and getting the crowd pumped and hyped, to cheer for them,” she said. “And then being able to see him once they come off the field, and he being able to see my face to know that I’m there to support him and his team.”

Throughout the years, Smith said she has been reading the Bible, taking business and parenting classes and managing emotions classes, teaching exercise classes, and playing softball and attending church.

“This experience has taught me who I really am now, because at first I was more so doing things to appease people, and to make people love me,” she said, “but now I love myself first and foremost.”

I ask Smith what she would want to say to her son.

“Right now I would tell him he has been a blessing to me ever since the day I first laid eyes in him. … He’s never disappointed in me anything that he did or said. And I’m very proud of the young man that he has become in spite of me not being there with him. And I’m very proud of all the accomplishments that he has made along with his team as well, and I pray the best for him, and I feel it and know it in my heart they are able and capable of winning the Super Bowl.

“There’s no more words to describe the love that I have for him. I’m just proud to be his mom. He has made me the happiest mom alive, and it’s been a joy being his mother.”

She will call him Monday. They talk every week. She may get to see him soon. Demaryius Thomas has a visit planned.